


orange-coloured sky.

by orphan_account



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Attempted Suicide, Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluffy Jacob, Hurt, Isn’t Too Graphic & Is Only Mentioned In One Scene But Still, Jacob’s in Love, Partially Accidental Attempted Suicide, Rook’s in Denial, Social Darwinistic Dorks in Love, Soft Jacob, Sweet Rook, Touch-Starved Jacob, but that doesn’t last long, sweet Jacob, tread cautiously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 07:44:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20578964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “I was walking along minding my business,When love came and hit me in the eye,(Flash, bam, alakazam,)Out of an orange colored sky.”- Orange-Coloured Sky, Nat King ColeWhat would’ve happened if the bombs had fallen while Rook was in the middle of liberating Jacob’s region?Two Social Darwinistic psychopaths become a surprisingly domesticated pair of dorks, that’s what.





	orange-coloured sky.

**Author's Note:**

> T R I G G E R W A R N I N G !
> 
> Attempted (accidentally, but still - putting this here just to be safe) suicide is mentioned and described in this fic.
> 
> Tread lightly if this is a difficult topic or avoid completely if it hits too close to home.

** _Day 1._ **

“Didn’t see this comin’ - did ya, sweetheart?”

Jacob hums, voice much too close for comfort.

But every bone, nerve and joint in Rook’s body aches from the car crash, so she can’t find the effort to lash out, let alone peel her eyes open.

** _Day 7._ **

She refuses to eat or drink. 

He isn’t sure if she’s slept, either - the dark circles clinging to her eyes aren’t promising. 

“You won’t be chained forever, y’know. But you’ll have to meet me halfway. Cooperation will be rewarded, pup. You know that better than anyone.”

Rook doesn’t meet his eyes, lips curling over her teeth in a snarl, whether in blatant petulance or feral disobedience, he isn’t sure.

** _Day 15._ **

He unlocks the cuffs. 

She isn’t convinced, stays right where she has for the last two weeks. 

Because Rook doesn’t believe that he’s truly releasing her without a single caveat or because her muscles are too weak to support her is up for debate. 

Eventually, Rook stands, jerking away from Jacob’s hands as with a growl. 

She doesn’t run for the door. 

She doesn’t scramble for a weapon to eviscerate him with. 

She doesn’t lunge for him, to try and strangle the life out of him, though there isn’t an iota of doubt in his mind that the thought has occurred to her.

No, Rook simply walks across the room on shaky legs, opens a cabinet, fishes out and brandishes a bottle of aged bourbon like it’s a trophy and pops open the top to indulge in her victory. 

“To the end of the fucking world,” Rook laughs, the hints of mania lingering in its wake, but it isn’t any less beautiful to Jacob’s ears. 

He’ll have to scour the bunker for alcohol.

He decides he’ll do so when she’s asleep. 

** _Day 29._ **

Rook tries to leave him.

One morning, he wakes up and she isn’t breathing.

He starts chest compressions, breathes air into her lungs, tastes alcohol and something faintly bitter on her tongue.

Pills.

He isn’t sure what kind, but as soon as her pulse stutters against his fingers, weak, faint, thready - he stuffs the digits down the back of her throat, and she purges the toxins from her stomach.

He sobs, harder than when John and Joseph had died, clutching her to his chest.

“You can’t leave me.  You can’t.  You’re all I have left. You’re mine.  Only you.”

Jacob cries through the night - with Rook’s ragged breath against his throat and her flimsy pulse beneath his fingers, seeking any and every reassurance that she is alive. 

** _Day 31._ **

Two days pass before Rook wakes - weak, exhausted, defeated.

“I don’t get you... I killed your family, your soldiers, your world... Ruined everything you worked for...”

Rook laughs, hoarse and caustic. 

“You’re keeping me around for repopulation, right? Survival of the fittest, the fittest breeding perfect little soldiers? Hate to break it to you, handsome - but I can’t have kids.”

This news surprises him, though it had no business doing so because he doesn’t really know anything about her. 

Strangely enough, he isn’t disappointed or disheartened. 

No, he simply hugs Rook closer to his chest, ignoring her feeble attempts at escape, her raspy curses at his touch, and buries his nose in her hair, basking in the intoxicating spice of her flooding his senses. 

“Family runs deeper than flesh and blood.”

** _Day 34._ **

Three days after that, static crackles over the radio he hadn’t turned on once since they’d been down here.

And he finds out that his siblings are alive, all of them, that she didn’t kill them, stashed them in their respective bunkers alongside her friends when the broadcasts warned that nuclear war was only days away from razing the earth to the ground.

Jacob hugs her so tightly that he cracks a few of Rook’s vertebrae.

** _Day 49._ **

He doesn’t leave her alone for weeks. 

Wherever Rook goes, Jacob is right behind her. 

Frustrated after a few days of this scrutiny, Rook whirls around and glares at him. 

“What the fuck’s your deal, Jacob? Your siblings are alive. You aren’t alone. You won’t be alone when I kick the bucket. You want me to atone for the people I did kill? Because I’ll take tattooing and skinning or sermons and lectures over hovering like a fucking helicopter parent any day of the week.” 

That last part is said bitterly, sarcastically - whether it’s an attempt at humor or to provoke him, it falls flat. 

The bunker is spacious, but it’s still a bunker, meaning there are only so many places to go.

“I told you it was a fucking accident!”

“You chased down sleeping pills with a bottle of whiskey. That‘s the  furthest thing from  a fucking accident.”

“Because it was the closest liquid nearby! Look, if I was going to off myself, it’d be way more poetic. Sylvia-fucking-Plath would be rolling in her grave, sobbing because she didn’t get the chance to write about it. Then again, it would’ve made a great ad campaign for the sleeping pill company...  Pills so effective, you’ll never wake up!”

He’s frowning at her so hard that she’s convinced his face will never be able to make a different expression. 

“... Jacob, I’m trying here.”

“Why did you take sleeping pills in the first place?”

“Because there’s this really annoying  cock that wakes up at the crack of dawn to wake up the rest of the barn -  of one \- for his morning workout. I wanted one night where I could sleep for eighteen-hours straight. Is that too much to ask for?” 

** _Day 93._ **

Jacob breaks.

Three months since the bombs dropped and he’d carried Rook’s broken, bloodied carcass out of the wreckage, about two months since the whiskey/sleeping pill fiasco — fifty-eight days, but who’s counting? 

Rook’s sitting in the den, reading  Pride and Prejudice because she’s overdosed on from Mario Kart 64 and The Twilight Zone for at least a few weeks, but her short-attention span and debilitating dyslexia has her using the classic novel as a blindfold to block her eyes from the cheap fluorescent lights and crashing out on the couch by the seventh page. 

She’s just dozing off, not asleep, but on the verge of losing consciousness, can already see the foggy windows of dreams behind her eyelids, when the hinges of the door scream in agony at being peeled open slowly.

Rook chalks it up to her imagination, even though she’s plenty aware that there’s only one other person stuck with her down here and he had this grating habit of following her into whatever room she’s occupying whenever she was just getting comfortable.

Like a sixth sense of the utmost annoyance. 

Except... He usually knocks. 

No. That’s not right.

He always knocks. 

Despite everything, he remained ever the gentleman. 

He didn’t knock this time around.

Rook would’ve thought that the scraping hinges were a figment of a quarantined mind had she not felt the burning sensation of eyes searing holes in the back of her skull.

“What do you want, boss?” Rook asks, words partially muffled by the paperback, unable to squash the irritation and exhaustion bleeding through the question because she was  just about to fall asleep, had tasted her subconscious pulling her under, her coping mechanism kicking-in, sleeping for nine hours and pretending she wasn’t trapped underground for the unforeseeable future.

Sure as hell wouldn’t be staying down here for seven-fucking-years. 

He doesn’t say anything. 

That in-and-of itself is bizarre — demons in Hell are more likely to make snow angels before Jacob Seed stops talking — but when Rook pulls the book off her face, her blood runs cold.

He’s trembling, his whole body shaking viciously, like there’s an earthquake devastating the foundations of his frame. 

There are tears in his sunken eyes, claw marks running down his forearms — nearly punctured the skin, threatening to bleed with just a bit more pressure — and the emotions running across his face flicker between fear, despair and pleading.

“Rook... Please.”

Every trace of sleep vanishes, has her up and off the couch in seconds. 

“Shit. What’s wrong? Is it your head?” 

Rook studies him carefully, anxiously, because when his headaches evolve into migraines, there’s an alarmingly high possibility those will devolve into meltdowns or panic attacks, and she can’t do anything when those come.

Just listen to the destruction he wreaks from a different room, torn between restraining him so he doesn’t hurt himself or staying right where she is because these can become eerily similar to his night terrors — she’d do more damage trying to help than if she just waited it out. 

Painful as it was.

“Please... Please, I need...”

“What? What do you need? Painkillers? They’re in the bathroom. I’ll go get them, just stay put—”

Rook isn’t given more than three seconds to think about leaving the room before Jacob lunges for her, the back of her legs hitting the couch, sending them stumbling back into the cushions, an  ‘oomph’  of surprise leaving her, sudden and unbidden.

Crumbling to his knees, his arms latch around her waist, burying his face in her stomach.

“... Jacob?”

He shakes his head. 

“Hey... Look at me.”

He doesn’t — can’t — so Rook gingerly cups his stubbled, scarred jaw in one hand and slowly tilts his face up.

The second she does this, his breath stutters in his chest, tension melting from his muscles at the feel of her fingertips.

“Touch... You miss touch...” Rook murmurs, a statement more than a question, running her fingers through his hair, watching the thick, burly muscles beneath his skin relax as she delicately kneads his taut frame, feels the anxiety and panic dissolve as he all but crumbles beneath her.

Jacob nods once, barely a dip of the chin, as if he’s frightened that too much movement would shake off her hands, that she’d stop her ministrations. 

His arms tremble around her waist at the thought. 

Rook hadn’t really thought much of it. 

She’s gone without human contact for days, weeks, months a few times in her lifetime. 

Solo operations hadn’t been particularly exciting highlights of her time in The Marines. 

Especially since the last one ended-up with her as a prisoner of war for three months. 

That’s why she doesn’t mind not experiencing touch. She’d rather feel nothing than be in that excruciating pain again. 

But it isn’t as if she and Jacob haven’t exchanged a few cursory touches - brushing fingers, tapping shoulders, patting heads.

Rook’s gone with and without physical contact, has learned to dissociate if either becomes too overwhelming.

Part of her contemplates teaching him how to do so, but there are three problems with this proposal.

_1.) Rook’s absolute shit at explaining things._

_2.) Rook isn’t really sure how to do it in the first place._

_3.) There’s a much easier solution. _

“C’mon. Let’s get you off the floor, yeah? Can’t be good for your knees.”

Jacob’s hold tightens around her.

Rook feels his jaw working harshly against her navel, and that is flooding her brain with  very sinful thoughts, has her clearing her barren throat, trying to clear her head.

This is not the time to take advantage of an emotionally-unhinged, touch-starved Social Darwinist.

“I’m just going to hoist you up onto the couch, old man. You can’t kneel like that all night. Just looking at you makes my joints ache.”

•

“... This doesn’t mean anything,” Rook murmurs, an hour after they’ve been on the couch, insisting that this is merely for sharing body heat in the chill of the bunker. 

Originally, when she eased him across the cushions, the thoughts running through her mind - faster than Usain-fucking-Bolt - about how to help (the word ‘comfort’ nudges at her conscience, but that word is too soft for him, for her, for either of them) him, she’d considered threading her hand through his short hair, nails delicately raking his skull, fingertips massaging his head.

King used to do that whenever she had an anxiety attack, bringing her back from the brink every single time without fail .

Only, Jacob had different plans - using their interwoven fingers to tug her close, to which she stumbled onto the couch, and Jacob locked his strong, corded arms around her.

To put it succinctly - Jacob is using Rook like a human blanket, their legs tangled, arms coiled around each other, not as much as an atom between them.

He doesn’t speak a word, but the huff of air exhaled against her temple is something airy, light, amused.

•

That’s the closest thing to a real laugh Jacob’s had in a long, long time.

Even before the bombs fell. 

Because Rook’s gone just as long as he had without any human contact.

She’s touch-starved - she must be - likely as much as he is, but she’s as stubborn as an ox, and he will not force himself on her. 

He realized, early-on, that this would have to be on her terms. 

Seeing as how they’ll be in here for the next seven years, Jacob surmises that they can take all the time they’d like. 

Because the only way that this relationship could develop, prosper, thrive is if she comes to him.

This was a good start.

** _Day 120._ **

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Rook mumbles against his mouth, with hazy eyes and swollen lips.

Jacob hums, catching her bottom lip between his teeth, biting it harshly, grinning like the Cheshire-fucking-Cat when Rook hisses into his mouth and gives as good as she gets. 

** _Day 135._ **

“This doesn’t mean anything.” 

Rook sighs after their first time, Jacob tracing the lines of her scars with mesmerized fingers - similar to how she’s taken to absentmindedly revering his scars and burns when they’re tangled-up in bed, splayed across the couch, cuddled-up together on the floor, watching the eclectic bunch of movies they’d found stashed in the strangest places—

•

** _Three Weeks Earlier._ **

_“Oh my god...” _

_“What’s wrong?” _

_“Who the f u c kleaves VHS tapes of classic movies in the cereal cabinet?! Lucky Charms have no right to be anywhere near Casablanca! No, no, no - don’t you dare give me that look! This is serious business! This is a crime against humanity! The son of a bitch had the audacity to leave To Kill A Mockingbird right next to Corn Flakes! Not Reeses’ Puffs, not Captain Crunch, not Fruit Loops. Fucking. Corn. Flakes. For fuck’s sake, Frosted Flakes would’ve been fine! But Corn Flakes? People in third-world countries that are lighter than a balloon would rather eat dirt than this shit!”_

•

— the closest thing to domestic that an apocalyptic bunker can offer and he is the  furthest thing from complaining - reveling in the contrast of puckered tissue and soft skin.

He smiles, mapping out the lines of the jagged tattoos John had carved into Rook’scollarbones with his lips, basking in the shaky intake of breath above him, before she’s tangling her fingers in his short hair and switching their roles, lightly nipping and kissing the constellation of scars across his body.

** _Day 150._ **

“Does this still not mean anything?” He asks, carding his fingers through her hair, the strands as soft as silk, which never fails to baffle him, seeing as how the bunker’s soap is laughably simple, didn’t even have a scent, is nothing but a bar of bland soap.

But it gets the job done, he muses.

“... Don’t ask stupid questions,” Rook murmurs, without any real vitriol, burying her face in his throat, lips brushing against the stubble there, kissing the scars that start from his jaw and trail up to his cheeks.

Jacob tangles his fingers in her hair, tilts her head up - whiskey eyes glossy, the haze of lust tinting them a salacious shade of bourbon, but when their eyes catch, that heated gaze smolders from a lascivious inferno to an adoring ember, and crushes their mouths together.

Judging by the smile against his lips, 

** _Day 180._ **

“What did you think of me when you first saw me?” Jacob asks, over their third game of Texas Hold ‘Em for the night.

Rook doesn’t look up from her cards, balancing a toothpick out of the corner of her mouth.

(They’d run out of cigarettes weeks ago.)

“You really want to know?”

Jacob tosses a few chips in, though his eyes haven’t moved from her face.

“I do.”

Rook pauses for a moment - whether it be because she’s thinking of her next move or seriously contemplating the question she’s been asked is up for debate.

“First thoughts? You were a fucking psycho. A logical, Darwinistic, handsome psycho, but a psycho.”

Jacob doesn’t bother hiding his chuckle, though he does his damndest to stifle a blush at hearing the word ‘handsome’.

“Second thoughts?”

Rook doesn’t miss a beat, checks the wooden table with a nonchalant air about her.

“How much I wanted to map out your scars.”

Jacob blinks. 

He couldn’t have heard that right. 

His scars are grotesque, disgusting, horrific. 

“Is that so?”

“With my tongue.”

A shaky inhale parts Jacob’s lips, makes a cocky grin take hold of Rook’s as she leans over the table, forgoing her cards, tossing in metaphorical chips when she’s close enough to make out the details of icy blue eyes, the adorable smattering of freckles across his nose, the pink that’s blooming in his cheeks, that she makes out under his burns and scars because she’s never flinched away from them - they’re as beautiful as the rest of him.

The only thing she hates how much pain he must’ve suffered when getting them, but she’s more than willing to kiss them, caress them, lavish them with nothing but tender love to make him forget about his past.

“Would you let me? Would you let me adore you, Jacob?”

“Only if you’ll let me return the favor, baby girl.”

Jacob hasn’t seen the sun in six months, but he doesn’t have to - there isn’t a doubt in his mind that Rook shines brighter than a supernova.

** _Three-and-a-Half Years Later._ **

They’d agreed - rather early in their secluded, claustrophobic sanctuary - that Joseph’s insistence of staying underground for seven years before “opening the doors to find The Gates of Eden” was ludicrous. 

Rook expected a heated argument - she’d never asked Jacob about his beliefs, doesn’t know if he has any, definitely knows that if he does, they aren’t anywhere near as intense as Joseph or John’s - but their conversation was civil and they reached a compromise that satisfied them both.

(For the most part. Both of them had days when they wanted to rip off the padlock of the metal hatch with their teeth and burst out into whatever wasteland they’d been trapped under. But their days of losing their patience, claustrophobia rearing it’s anxiety-rich head, insanity gnawing at the fraying threads of their common sense never synced-up, so the compromise stayed.)

•

The door opens.

Light spills into their space, blinding them.

The sun‘s never shone so brightly. 

•

The world is ruined.

Few have survived.

Most don’t need any persuasion to join Eden’s Gate, apologize for not believing Joseph’s prophecies and his brothers (Faith, according to Sharky, is terrified of him, won’t be leaving The Henbane anytime soon, especially not since she reconciled with - and subsequently, scraped her hands and knees falling for - Tracey) in the first place. 

Nature has mutated, adapted.

Rook becomes The Seeds’ guardian angel.

(Joseph’s words, _definitely_ not hers.)

Rook, who sought to kill him just a year before, protect him, shield him, fight for him.

Rook doesn’t believe in God, not even after everything that’s happened, but she believes in Jacob.

That means more to Jacob than he’d admit. 

•

Rook becomes Joseph’s third Herald.

The Spartan. 

•

They head South.

Montana had nothing to offer, not anymore, not even ashes to sift through. 

Within a few weeks, they find themselves in California. 

The government had crumbled, the politicians wiped out, the slate cleansed and ready to be carved anew. 

•

More than their fair share of people doubt him, a few attempt to silence Joseph. 

Literally.

But they never get close enough. 

Because Rook either has a knife at their throat or a gun to their head.

Not because she’s particularly fond of Joseph - her brain shuts down whenever he dissolves into a religious diatribe, just like it did before the bombs dropped - but he is Jacob’s little brother, so it’s protection by association. 

Rook does, however, become incredibly protective of John, nearly as much as Jacob is, because he‘s a completely different person than the one she’d spared over three years ago.

Coming out of his bunker, only to find The Gates of Eden are nowhere to be found, that there’s nothing beautiful left, that the only prophecy to come true was that the world ended, that this is the precise opposite of a paradise - it was closer to the depths of hell - hit him hard. 

He doesn’t talk much - hardly ever, only if spoken to. Even then, the words are clipped and quiet, as if it’s a tremendous endeavor to push them out of his mouth. 

He’s amicable with everyone that was in the bunker with him - Nick, Kim, lil’ Carmina, Jerome, Mary May, Grace - hell, Boomer is his unofficially official emotional support animal, cuddling up to his side, trotting alongside him, growling at anyone who gets too close for comfort.

That’s when Rook knows that John’s changed. 

How he gingerly scratches behind Boomer’s ears when his anxiety claws at him, how Boomer doesn’t leave his side for anything, how John can’t sleep without the comforting weight of Boomer’s head resting on his stomach.

Looks like there’s a three-way tie between Jacob, Rook and Boomer for who’s more protective. But it isn’t a challenge as much as it is wanting to make sure he’s doing all right. Three pairs of eyes are definitely better than one. Not to mention that the only time Rook sees John smile - a real, true smile that isn’t laced with manic instability, that Jacob hasn’t seen since they were children, that Boomer celebrates with an enthused bark and eager wag of his tail - is when they’re around him.

Like they’re the only things anchoring him to this reality, refuse to let him fall into the pit of despair that threatens to swallow him, tangible reminders that there are people - and animals - that care about him. 

That being said, Rook doesn’t hesitate to sever the jugulars or introduce bullets to the brains of people who threaten any of the brothers, blood cascading down their chests or leaking out of their skulls, making visceral examples out of heathens that tried to lead the flock astray. 

Rook doesn’t say anything while she does this, but the fluidity in her movements speaks volumes as does the fire in her eyes.

Anyone who threatens her family will be put down. 

She doesn’t realize she’s said _“family”_ until she has three Seedlings barricading her in a hug that’s simultaneously suffocating and heart-warming.

Rook’s about to chew them out, a reflex more than an anything - it’d taken her three months to be physically intimate with Jacob, two more months to admit that it wasn’t just for convenience or survival,  give her a break .

But then three pairs of lips are touching her - Joseph’s against her temple, John’s against her cheek, Jacob’s against her throat - lingering like kissing her is the one and only thing their mouths are made for, an open display of affection that has her pulse doubling, tripling, quadrupling at a dangerous, embarrassing, loving pace. 

Judging by the smile branded against her throat, Jacob’s aware of the effect this surprising amount of tenderness, passion, is having on her.

Rook can’t find it in herself to cuss him out for being a smug, handsome bastard. 

Mostly because the words melt into a thick ball of emotion stuck in her throat, rendering her speechless. 

Rook tries to swallow it down, but it’s a fruitless effort, so she relents, the tension seeping out of her, arms winding around the three of them as best she can. 

Rook had never doubted the end of the world, but nothing could’ve prepared her for finding a family she’d never had, for a family she’d convinced herself she didn’t want in fear of rejection or heartbreak, for a family she didn’t think she deserved after the things she’s done.

Surrounded by the family that she’d been assigned to arrest, kill, torture nearly four years ago - their arms linked around her, hugging her with unabashed adoration, kissing her like this is what they lived for, this is why they survived, this is what made the end-of-the-world completely and utterly worth it - would be giving her a neck-snapping, mind-shattering case of whiplash if it didn’t feel so  _fucking_ good. 

Weeks ago, when Rook and Jacob climbed out of their bunker, the thoughts that threatened to crack her skull to pieces were that the world was decimated beyond the point of repair, that their survival wasn’t a miracle like Joseph proclaimed but a cruel joke, that they might be walking and breathing, but they’re the furthest thing from alive. 

But right now, weeks after climbing out of that bunker...

When sunlight spilled across her skin after years of fluorescent lighting...

When soil filtered through her fingers after months of concrete flooring...

When voices she’d heard through the radio for weeks instead coming from the real, tangible forms of her best friends...

Rook isn’t religious - never believed in The Gates of Eden or any other spirituality, for that matter - but in this moment, there isn’t a doubt in her mind that this is her paradise.

**Author's Note:**

> ... I’ve had this in my notes for *Chris Traeger voice* L I T E R A L L Y — 
> 
> Months. 
> 
> Posted it because, if I hadn’t, my ADHD riddled-ass would’ve continued adding/subtracting/editing since I doubt any/everything I write or I would’ve let it rot in my notes ‘til the end of time.
> 
> But seriously - I would’ve been 1,000,000,000% happier if we’d ended-up in the bunker with Jacob.
> 
> ... Or John... Do I have an abandoned note of being trapped in the bunker with John? Of course I do! Will the world ever see it? Who knows! I don’t. Let’s see if anyone likes this one, first.


End file.
